That Knits Up the Ravel'd Sleeve of Care
by puellanerdii
Summary: After Nabudis falls, there is no rest for the Judge responsible. Spoilers through the Pharos. Violence, some gore.


_Zecht can smell them almost before he sees them—the Mist released by the Midlight Shard has twisted their flesh and preserved it imperfectly, lending false life to rotting limbs. Their skin sloughs off their bones, hangs in tatters from withered muscle and sinew, turns black and brittle when light touches it. They surround him, filling the air with the sickly sweet stench of rotting meat and the suffocating tang of Mist, desiccated lips and blasted tongues forming words only the dead can say. He covers his ears and shouts the necessary incantation for Silence until his throat is raw and hoarse, but their voices press on, slipping through the chinks in his magisterial armor to strike at his heart. He pushes his way through the mass blindly, but when he strikes one's rotting head from its shoulders, or kicks a hole through another's fragile ribcage, three more of the dead spring up in their fallen comrade's place, their eyes glassy and blind but still _seeing him.

_"…in the kitchens when the world fell, gathering provisions in a sack for the troops…"_

_"…fifteen, and the armor they gave me was too big around the chest, but I wore it proud like Ma said I should and I pictured her smiling at me every time I lifted my sword…"_

_"…didn't really want to be a mechanic, but Dad said it was an honest trade and he wouldn't have a mummer for a son, not while he had breath in his body…"_

_"…took three Imperial bastards to the grave before I fell, would've gotten more if my gun hadn't jammed…"_

_"…and then the rest of the village was sick, so we checked the well and it smelled like burning metal…"_

_"…it's the Mist what warped my bones and made my hair fall out, I'm sure of it, the Mist that crawled into my lungs and scratched them open…"_

_"…ended up nothing more than skin stretched over my ribs, what with the year's harvest turned to ash, wish I'd been closer to the explosion so it could've taken me quick…"_

_"…oh gods I can't see the poison is in me oh gods please I don't want to die…"_

_"Why is it so cold?"_

_"Why am I dead?"_

_"Why did you do it?"_

"Why?" _they scream, and he looks within himself and finds he has no answer to give them. When they see he does not speak, they swarm over him with a shout, dead limbs pressing against his chest and arms and shoulders until decayed hands wrap around his ankles with surprising (if brittle) strength and jerk his legs out from beneath him. He falls to his knees with a thud, and they crowd around him. Clammy fingers leave chunks of muscle behind as they trail across his face and the smell crowds his nostrils and he chokes and tries to scream, but any noises he makes are lost in their wailing, their eternal godsdamned _Whys…

Judge Magister Zecht sits bolt upright in his bed, his breathing shallow. The skies of Archades are the black of velvet curtains, smothering and heavy. For a moment, he is sure he can feel putrid fingers locked around his throat, but a breeze flows through the crack in his window and dispels that illusion. For now.

He reaches for the crystal by his bedside (more expensive than a lanthorn, but more practical, and he can afford it) and whispers the arcane phrase required to activate it. Its dim glow cannot banish the darkness lurking in the corners of his room. The scrollwork on his chair casts long shadows, whorls and curves and arches elongating to become the talons of…of something best not contemplated at such hours.

Zecht rests his head in his hands and glances at the clock on his desk. Still four hours to daybreak.

He doubts he will sleep any further tonight. The thought brings him little comfort.

* * *

Over the next week, he takes to purchasing alarm clocks—mundane ones at first. Zecht reasons that if he purchases many clocks, he can have them all ring at different times during the night and so prevent sleep from overtaking him. The first night, this strategy works admirably. On the second, half-formed images of falling towers and the coppery scent of blood thick in the air seep into his mind before he realizes that three of his clocks are clamoring for his attention. And on the third night, the dead of Nalbina visit him again in his dreams.

He wakes to sweat-soaked sheets and a violent storm brewing overhead.

When the morning comes, Zecht does not bother to don his magisterial armor before visiting Granch's Requisites. Granch recognizes him even without his symbols of office, and greets him appropriately. (Or inappropriately, considering the circumstances.)

"Judge Magister!" he says, snorting in excitement. "What brings you into my shop?"

He winces—has Granch always been this loud? "Just civilian business, Granch." He prays that the entire shop will not now see fit to eavesdrop upon their conversation after hearing the words _Judge Magister_ fall from Granch's lips.

"Of course, of course. What will you be buying, Juge Ma—sir?"

"Alarm Clocks. Your best, please, with the strongest enchantments to defend against Sleep." He does not know if they will work on sleep induced not by magick but fatigue. He prays they will.

"Of course, sir." The seeq snorts. "How many?"

"An even forty, I think."

"Forty! Well, that's quite the number, sir, if you don't mind me saying. Don't often get orders of that size—MORY!" he bellows. "Fetch forty Alarm Clocks from our stores, and do it quickly!"

"It is necessary for a future undertaking of mine," Zecht says, dancing around the truth in the manner of all Archadians.

"Of course, sir." Granch leans in closer. His breath smells of stale onions. "If you ask me, sir…" He snorts, his ears flapping in excitement as his head bobs up and down. "If you ask me, sir, you could use a good dose of Sleep, not preventatives against it. Not that I object to you making your purchases here, of course," he adds hastily.

Zecht blinks at him for a few moments, rubbing his forehead. "Do I look that frightful?"

"Oh, no, sir! Fit as a fiddle, you are," Granch hastens to reassure him. "It's just shadows, is all. The ones under your eyes. I thought at first that you might be paintin' them on with charcoal the way Rozarrian women do." He wheezes with stale laughter.

"No," Zecht says quietly. "I believe it to be no more than a trick of the light."

"Right you are, sir. Two thousand gil, if you please?"

He hands over the required sum, his purse lighter but the weight on his heart remaining the same.

The magicks keep him suspended in wakefulness for four days. On the second, the stench of rot permeates his hands, and no amount of soap and water can cleanse its taint. The black substance caked beneath his fingernails wriggles and writhes, he is sure of it, for he feels the twitches roll down the length of his fingers, and when he tries to scrub his nails clean, the black mass moves deftly to avoid the bristles of his nail-brush.

On the third, his secretary finds him slashing at the air with his twin blades, sweat dripping from his brow.

"A banshee," he pants, lowering his arms.

She shakes her head as though in a daze, her stack of papers clutched tight to her chest. "Judge Magister, the dead cannot rise within the paling."

"Then the paling has been breached," he snaps. He clutches the edge of his desk.

"The paling stands secure, Judge Magister. I have heard no reports of a breach…" She trails off. "Unless such reports have reached your ears and not mine, sir. Judge Magister," she adds hastily.

"But you heard it, surely? You heard its cry?" His ears still ring from its dirge.

"No, Judge Magister." She brushes a lock of hair from her eyes. "Do you wish to retire to your quarters?"

He shakes his head, his throat numb. He cannot be going mad. The magicks should stave off the madness and waking dreams for another two days, by his best estimate; he supplements the Alarm Clocks with Smelling Salts, and that should be enough. It should be enough.

_Nothing is enough, _the banshee wails.

He claps his hands over his ears.

On the fourth day, he calls on Doctor Cid.

* * *

The Draklor Laboratories are as reclusive and labyrinthine as ever, their twisted passageways arranged to befuddle unwelcome outsiders who would seek entry to the place, but Zecht will have none of it today. He strides to the front gates with his helm firmly in place, his armor clanking as he walks. It feels heavy and cumbersome, but it shows that he has power here, and in such a place, he needs such visible reminders.

"Tell Bunansa I would speak with him," he instructs the guards posted at the door. One nods and heads inside, emerging several long minutes later.

"Doctor Cid sends you his regards, and tells you that you are a most honored guest, Judge Magister. His office is on the sixty-seventh floor."

Doctor Cid's office, when Zecht at last reaches it, is in a state of disarray unlike anything he has seen. Books cover every available surface, loose papers blanket the walls and floors, and the doctor himself sits surrounded by a stack of blueprints, ink staining his fingertips and cuffs.

"Ah, Judge Magister," he says, waving a leaking fountain pen above his head and beckoning Zecht closer. "I am in your debt for your contributions to my research. Yes. Very much so. Have you come for your reward?"

"No, I…" And in truth, he cannot say why he has come; certainly Doctor Cid is not one to set anyone's mind at ease, or has not been for years now. "I cannot sleep, Doctor."

"I'm not the sort of doctor who prescribes pills and tinctures, Judge Magister." He looks over his spectacles at Zecht. "I've nothing to offer you."

He glances at a chair piled high with leather-bound arcane volumes. "May I—?"

"Oh, sit, sit. Guests get the best seats. Isn't that so, Venat?"

A twitch runs down Zecht's spine. "Venat, Doctor? Who is Venat?"

"Who, what…" Cid waves his hands in the air like a conjurer. "No importance. Very esoteric research. It wouldn't interest you."

"Your research seems to be increasingly relevant to my work," he says. The thought sits ill with him.

"My endeavors will bring glory undying to Archadia. Of course they're relevant to your work." Cid laughs once.

"Glory undying…" he whispers.

_Their faces flash before him again, graying flesh with bruised eyelids and cracked lips, half-eaten noses and sunken cheeks, and eyes, wide and dull and cavernous. The other judges speak of Nabudis in whispers. They name it a necrohol, an unhallowed place._

_And he made it thus._

"Glory undying," he repeats; a distant part of his brain notes the tremor in his voice. "Undying, yes, but I see no glory in it."

"Then your sight is poor," Cid responds sharply. He throws his pen aside. It spurts ink over a yellowing stack of papers.

"_You did not see it,_" Zecht hisses, balling his hands into fists. Judge Magister or no, it would be unwise to strike the Emperor's chief researcher.

Unwise, but tempting.

"I have eyes everywhere, Judge Magister." Cid taps his spectacles, his smile sharp as knives. "Eyes that reported wondrous things. And the data seems to confirm their testimony. Oh, yes. We live at the dawn of a new age."

Zecht's helm weighs heavy on his brow. He lifts it from his face and studies its visage. In the light of Doctor Cid's office, it seems to be the face of an abyssal thing, a long-forgotten horror from childhood stories. Its features are delineated with inhuman sharpness; the lines of silver not thrown into shadow gleam like blades. He throws it aside as hard as he can; it hits a bookshelf to his right and clatters to the floor, partially buried by a cascading shower of papers.

"It is an age I do not wish to see," he says.

"You fear what is to come?" Cid asks, propping his chin on his fist as though Zecht has proposed an interesting new theory.

"You would do the same, if you had my dreams."

"Oh, I know your dreams." The doctor's smile is serene. "You dream of the dead, do you not? Pesky things. They always weigh us down when we know we must go up. For our destiny lies not in the earth, but in the skies."

"I care not for your prattle."

"And I care not for your foolishness," Cid retorts. "There is an old saying—how did it go, Venat?"

He pauses. Zecht thinks he hears the faintest hint of a rustling wind—something low and sharp in the air. He looks towards the door of Cid's office, but it is sealed tightly. This place sets his teeth on edge.

"Of course. 'You cannot see the forest for the trees.'" Doctor Cid stands, sending the blueprints stacked on his lap tumbling to the floor. "Seek the forest, Judge Magister. I guarantee it will be a more majestic sight."

Zecht turns on his heel and departs. He leaves his helm behind.

* * *

He is relieved of his duties as Judge Magister a week later.

"This is sudden," Gramis says. He holds Zecht's letter of resignation between his thumb and forefinger.

"Would you deny my request, Your Grace?" Zecht asks, his voice as stiff as his stance.

Gramis shakes his head. "You have served me faithfully. I would not see that loyalty sour. I shall elevate Gabranth to your position, once he completes the task set for him. You will desire your pension…"

"No, Your Grace," he says quietly. "I desire nothing."

"Will you remain in Archades?"

"No, Your Grace." He does not elaborate.

"Very well." Gramis laces his fingers together and rests them over his chest. "If your colleagues inquire after you, what shall I tell them?"

"Inform them that I have gone missing, or that I am no more, Your Grace," he says.

"If that is your wish. You may go."

"Your Grace." He bows.

Gramis's voice halts his exit. "Zecht?"

"Yes, Your Grace?"

"I should not have asked it of you."

There is silence. Zecht looks squarely at the door. "You did what you must, Your Grace."

He does not look upon his emperor again.

When the airship bound for Balfonheim fires its engines and soars over Archades, the traveling families cluster around the windows, eager to catch a glimpse of their city from such a breathtaking vantage point.

Zecht is not among their number.

He inherited a mansion in Balfonheim from his mother's line. The Reddas Manse, after his great-grandfather. Perhaps the streetears in Archadia's pocket will not find him tucked away in its sturdy walls.

But he doubts the dreams will be so easy to escape.


End file.
